We know we consume. We know others consume. But, it is nearly impossible to visualize what that joint consumption looks like as a whole or what kind of an impact it has on our environment.

An artist in Seattle, Chris Jordan, has found a shocking way to depict the sheer immensity of our consumption. The pictures are somehow pleasing, even beautiful, but the devil is in the details.A closer look reveals horrific sights and what a disaster we are creating. The figures are mind-bending:

1,000,000 plastic cups on airline flights in the US every 6 hours

410,000 paper cups in the US every 15 minutes

2,000,000 plastic beverage bottles in the US every 5 minutes

8,000,000 harvested trees in the US every month to make mail order catalogues

Biofuels are a hot topic. And rightfully so. Recent research has indicated that farmers prefer biofuels instead of edible crops because of the high yields – resulting in food shortages. But there’s more.

CNN recently reported that “energy crops destroy natural forests that actually store carbon and thus are a key tool in the fight to reduce global warming.”

Ecologist Joseph Fargione continued the same thread in a Scientific American article, saying that “Any biofuel that causes land clearing is likely to increase global warming.”

“A mobile phone can dramatically improve living standards by saving wasted trips, providing information about crop prices, summoning medical help, end even serving as a conduit to banking services… A growing body of evidence suggests that access to communications boosts incomes and makes local economies far more efficient.”

The forward-thinking state government of South Australia released a new solar “feed-in” legislation last year which allows home-owners with solar panels to receive double-credit for the power they feed into the grid.

Essentially, the government will buy back any excess energy that private solar cells produce.

The new legislation has resulted in the Adelaide Solar City initiative, which encourages citizens to go green, or rather, yellow. And make an extra buck while lowering environmental impacts.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that in 20 years, the world’s energy needs will be covered entirely by solar – saying that there is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need.

Currently, sustainable energy sources like wind and solar only address around 1 percent of our insatiable thirst for energy, but this is sure to change as new technology like nano-engineered materials for solar panels starts maturing.

VNL is already pioneering the field of solar applications with WorldGSM™ – the world’s first entirely solar-powered GSM network.